PMI Organisational Agility Conference 2015, Setting the Stage for Innovation has been kicked off by Mark Langley, Project Management Institute® President and CEO, at 3 pm (Polish Time) on 15th of September. Setting it virtual, made this event available for all PMI® members no matter where they are based. The event focused on importance of agility.

Mark stressed that agility results from many factors and the most crucial are:

the organisations’ willingness and ability to support the culture that embraces change, which is constant

better ability to respond to emerging new competitors, technology changes or sadden shift in customers expectations.

The conference focused also on “hyper agility”, which means ability to adapt to changes in the environment in real time.

After a short opening remarks from Mark, we could listen to a great presentation on “The Agility Factor: The Routines of Sustainable Performance” by Christopher Worley, a director at the Center for Leadership and Effective Organizations and a Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the NEOMA Business School.

Adopting some of the take aways from Christopher’s speech: to be more dynamic in the way we think (think all the time) and good is enough and having in mind “hyper agility” mentioned above, I’m planning to post more in real time, so some of my posts might not be perfect but hopefully good enough:-).

And here you are, the conference is still on and you can read this post.

Some introduction from Christopher and more details in my drawing.

“Every large business faces periods of discontinuity that require transformation. In response, firms adopt reactive change management practices that set new objectives and define strategic initiatives intended to better align the organization to future marketplace demands. Research and experience suggests that these transformations often work well enough to ensure survival but rarely meet their performance objectives. Even as organizations face clear challenges to be more agile and changeable, they are stuck with design principles, change management technologies, and cultures that encourage stability and favor the status quo. Weary, battered, and bruised from the effort, and in the face of continued marketplace shifts, leadership reluctantly realizes that they have to go through the whole process again. The goal of transformation is usually “to adapt,” it is rarely “to become adaptable”.

My take aways from this great presentation:

Do not spend time too much time to develop a perfect strategy/business model. Make it good enough and try out. Testing is more important than innovation.